


The Swans in Autumn

by joely_jo



Series: An Ever-Fixed Mark [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuing where Never Be The Same left off, Catelyn and Ned must deal with the results of Brandon's discovery of their indiscretions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Swans in Autumn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DKNC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DKNC/gifts).



> Written for my lovely friend DKNC, in honour of her birthday. I promise it won't make you cry all the way through.

Swans in Autumn

For dknc3

 

A leaf crunches underneath her foot, blown from one of the pink-flowering cherry trees that line the park’s winding paths. It is October, though, and there are no flowers adorning the branches of those trees. The summer has been hot and dry and protracted, quite unusual for this part of the world, but now it is stumbling and the days are getting cooler. Soon, there will be a change, she knows, and it will be sudden and marked. The last vestiges of warmth will finally lose their grip and the high, cold winds will begin to rattle in off the moors, bringing with them rain and driving sleet, emptying this park of all but the bravest of souls.

It’s been three months since the climate of her own world changed. That fateful day in hottest July, when Brandon came home early from a trip away, to find she and Ned showering together in the annexe, heralded the coming of winter for Catelyn. Nothing has been the same since then.

In those three months, Brandon has spent barely a week at home, choosing instead to fill his time with work and social visits. Catelyn knows his absence is his way of dealing with all that has happened, of coming to terms with his roles of betrayer and betrayed. He may be the cuckolded husband, but he cuckolded her long before she did the same to him. She supposes she is grateful for his understanding of that, at least, for it spares her the painful confession of her own guilty hand in the whole thing.

But late at night, in bed alone, she often finds herself weeping as she thinks what will become of them, the word _divorce_ a constant echo in her head. She wonders how long they will continue this silent charade and which of them will tire of it first.

It is in her bed that she misses Ned the most. The way he would cradle her after they had made love, his arm wrapped over her, the warmth of his body curled around hers. They had shared their innermost selves to one another in the afterglow of sex, and she misses the connection they had forged, the feeling that she had found the one person in the world who truly understood her without the need for words.    

Her body aches with the tension of it all. Her shoulders are knots that feel so tight they might never be undone, while her stomach is hollow and her head muzzy from disturbed sleep. She sniffs back a runny nose, the legacy of the latest of a run of colds she’s had for the last two months. Some mornings she looks at herself in the mirror and thinks that her face is losing its beauty. Will she ever feel attractive again?

The days pass like clockwork. The same schedule, day after day, so that the monotony of them begins to soothe her. She buries herself in her work, for it gives her sanctuary from the huge emptiness of the house and the even greater loneliness that embraces her heart. Ned’s office is just down the road from hers – it was in this very park that they first shared lunch – but she has not seen anything more of him than the ghost of his silver BMW passing her in the street.  

For the first few days after, she rang him every day, desperate to hear his voice, wanting nothing more than to just _talk_ , but each time all she heard was the pregnant pause that signalled his answerphone picking up. At first, she left messages, then when none of her calls were returned, when it became clear that he was not just busy in a meeting or watching a film, the frequency of her calls fell away. Was it harassment if he obviously didn’t want to speak to her? Yet still she calls, now and again, unable to quite cut the threads that bound them so cleanly as he has. There is never an answer, but each time she hits his name in her contacts, her stomach fills with a cocktail of fear and dread and her hands tremble, because at least now, while they exist in this wordless vacuum, she can persuade herself that there is still a chance of things between them mending.

She pulls out her phone now and checks it, as she does from time to time. She is never quite sure what she is checking for – a call from Brandon, or one from Ned. Not that it matters. There are no missed calls. No messages. Nothing. Sometimes, in darker moments, she wonders if it was all worth it and if she had her time again, whether would she change the decisions she made. Had she pushed Ned away that night in Winterfell’s kitchen, she would surely have saved them all some pain.

The sun is setting like a gaping wound, great red streaks spreading across the dimming sky. Stopping by the curve of the lake, she stares for the longest time at the bloody colours reflected in its still surface. A swan swims into view, regal and remote, and she watches it as it glides like the moon towards her. Behind the leading bird, another follows, a little larger than the first, its wings held in a more pronounced bow. A breeding pair, she thinks, their cygnets long since fledged and grown. The sight forces a sigh from her, the sadness and loneliness welling up inside her so that she throws her head back and looks desperately heavenward.

“They mate for life, you know.”

His voice is so unexpected she almost feels her heart stop right there in her chest. She turns, half expecting to find that she has truly lost her mind and entered some kind of twilight zone where memories become reality, but there he is, standing a few paces behind her, his hands plunged into the pockets of his dark overcoat. “Ned!” she gasps. His eyes are fixed on the two swans, but at her exclamation, they flick to meet hers.

“Cat…”

He looks tired and haunted, grey around the edges, like a faded photograph. Belatedly, she realises that he has shaved his beard off, and the newly exposed skin is pale and wan. He sniffs – he has a cold too – and smiles gently at her. The expression is an instant comfort to her, infused as it is with his characteristic seriousness.   _Always so solemn_ , Brandon used to tease him, but Catelyn understands that the seriousness is only skin deep. Ned is not shy, but he is not gaudy like his brother. He is a quiet, reserved person, and his seriousness is simply how he deals with the world. Alone, he comes alive. She knows – she has seen.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, just as he opens his mouth and asks her the very same question. She laughs at their like-mindedness and his smile flashes again.

He draws in a breath, then releases it slowly and thoughtfully, as if he has to actually contemplate why he is here at all. “I came here for a walk,” he tells her. “It’s a pleasant night.”

There is nothing in his voice, his emotions battened down so thoroughly he seems almost wooden. He is keeping his cards close, then, she thinks. _So will I._ “The same. I was about to leave to go home, but I saw the swans.”

She looks back at the lake, to where the swans are swimming soundlessly across the surface, like shadowy icebergs in a dark sea. For a long moment, they are as silent as the two birds, drifting in the wake of all their memories. Cat feels the weight of every breath she takes, as if someone is standing on her chest, the tension in her shoulders multiplying infinitesimally. Finally, she finds the strength to sigh, and as she draws in another breath, she realises that she is on the verge of tears.

“Ned, I’m so sorry. I’ve been such an idiot, I… I, I can’t… I’m sorry. I miss you, I need you, I love you.” The words rush out in a jumbled passion of communication. Held in for too many months, they are an admission to even herself, a recognition of the depth of her sorrow. She stands there, frozen in the horror of confession, silently begging him to enfold her in his arms, to offer her a salve to spread on her soul.

A frown ripples across his brow. “This is wrong,” he says, and he sounds like a judge delivering sentence. “We both know it is.”

“Yes, but--”

“There can be no buts, Cat. We must stop this.” He shakes his head. His hands are out of his pockets now and she can see them clenching and unclenching in violent hopelessness. “You swore a vow to my brother. My _brother_ \--”

“But Brandon doesn’t love me!” she protests. “We barely speak. He’s hardly ever at home anymore.” The tears that have been threatening to spill over now speed down her cheeks, leaving thin, cold lines on her face. “He wants a divorce, I know it, but he won’t ask for one.”

Looking away, Ned seems to be holding something at bay, but it eats at his silence until he breaks with a sigh. “I haven’t spoken to him since the morning after he found us,” he admits. “I haven’t even sought him out. I fear he will never speak to me again.”

She senses a kernel of hope and seizes upon it. Perhaps their shared understanding of the ruins they stand among will draw them together again. “He won’t forgive me either,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” murmurs Ned. “For everything.” His eyes hold hers a moment, then he reaches up and wipes the tracks of the tears from her cheeks, hesitating as his hands fall instinctively to cup her face. His thumbs hover over the sweep of her cheekbones, then drop away. Catelyn thinks he is about to kiss her, but instead he shakes his head and looks away, pained. “I can’t do this.”

With a sudden jerking movement he spins away and begins walking away from her, his footsteps crunching on the path.

“Ned!” she calls and pursues him. “ _Ned!_ ”

His strides are vast and she has to run a few paces to catch up with him. She grabs his sleeve and he jams to a halt, then whirls on her. His face is dark as thunder, his eyes like two hard, grey marbles. He seizes her forearms in a vice-like grip and demands, “Don’t you understand?” Anger makes his voice quaver. “I love you so much it hurts just to look at you, knowing that I can’t have you. Do you have any idea how many nights I’ve lain awake thinking about you, wishing I could change things, bartering with myself about seeking you out again, pleading to the gods above that I could see you one more time. Just one night, I’d tell myself. Just one night and then never again. I’ve driven all the way out to Winterfell just to sit there in my car at the top of the driveway, knowing Brandon was away, knowing that all I had to do was press that button and you’d answer and let me in. But instead, each time, I drove away. Do you know how hard it’s been to deny myself you?”

The sudden force of his released emotion hits her square in the chest and knocks the wind out her, leaving her wordless and adrift. Seeming to sense her floundering, he rounds in for the kill. “You’ve broken me, Catelyn. I’ve loved you and you’ve broken me.”

She stares at him. Her head is filled with fog and everything - questions, argument, opposition - seems entirely out of her reach. Instead there is just a horrifying guilt yawning in her soul. A pain settles in the centre of her chest, as if he has just reached inside her and yanked out her still-beating heart. In her belief that he wished to never see her again, she had thought that he no longer cared. How wrong she had been.

An apology seems pitiful, but she can find no other words. “I’m sorry,” she says.

He looks away. The lake is dark like a pool of spilled ink. Or blood, she thinks. Our blood.

It would make sense for him to leave; she knows that if he did, she wouldn’t stop him this time; yet he doesn’t move. She can hear his breathing, smell the sharp spice of his cologne above the warmth of his body. “If I had been made a stronger man,” he mutters at length. He turns back to her. His lips are tight with agony. “And, oh, how I have tried!”

He reaches up and takes her face in his hands and kisses her, his mouth claiming hers with a ferocity that is quite at odds with his usual calm demeanour. She is so shocked, she fights against it at first, but he neither ceases nor lessens his bruising attack. His mouth forces hers open and he breathes her air a moment, his face millimetres from her own. “I have tried,” he admits in a cracked, defeated voice, “and failed.”

With the strength of her whole body, Catelyn pulls away from him. His hands drop, coming to rest of her shoulders, and he visibly sags. “No more than I have,” she tells him. “Come on.”

She reaches up and takes his right hand in hers, clasping it gently. The swans have drifted closer; the male lifts himself in the water, stretching heavenward, and flaps his great white wings, making plumes of water fly up. Then, impossibly delicately, he eases back down into the water and his wings settle one over the other, calm once more. Catelyn sighs, and their hands squeeze together, finding their natural position too.

***

She has never been with someone so patient, so meticulous. Her body feels like it has been roused one nerve ending at a time, until her blood is humming like a hive of bees. It is not sex, not at all – it is more like mending, the stitching together of a wound that has gaped open and suppurated. She straddles him, the feel of him deep inside her like a needle suturing them back to how they once were. There are tremors shaking him, his hands gripping hard onto her hips so that she isn’t sure if his release is upon him already or if he simply cannot hold himself still. She runs her fingers along the slick seam of their bodies, to where he disappears into her, where it is impossible to distinguish where one of them begins and the other ends. When she looks down at him through the darkness, she sees the understanding on his face. He feels it too.

It is only when they separate, breathing hard and heavy-limbed from climax, that she feels a sting.

“Don’t make me give you up,” she pleads, one hand resting on the damp skin of his chest, feeling the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

The words make him tense as if for flight. She has said them purposefully, to remind him of the last time, but now wishes she had not. Something about the moment changes and what had been forgotten in the heat of their love-making is now remembered.

Silence fills the room they are in, an unwelcome guest amid the reconstruction of their relationship. She can hear the rustle of the duvet as he shifts his position, then pushes her gently away from him and sits up on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched. “I find myself wishing everything would go back to how it was,” he says at last. “I never believed myself a dishonest man, but I would take secrecy and lies over this any day.”

Catelyn knows she would also. She gets up and comes to wrap her arms around him from behind, pressing her breasts against the cool plane of his back. He shivers. “What are we going to do?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

She wants to say the word _divorce_ , but it jams in her throat, bitter as cud. Vows _can_ be unmade, she tells herself firmly, and there are times when it is necessary to do so. “You should formalise things with Brandon,” Ned says as the thought finishes in her head. “It’s the right thing to do now.”

“Yes,” she replies. “And then what?”

Ned sighs. He twists and pulls her into his lap. His hand reaches up to tuck the stray threads of her hair behind her ears, neatening her, before pausing to kiss the bridge of her nose, and then press his face into her neck. She can feel his cock once again hardening against her thigh. “We migrate,” he murmurs. There is the ghost of a laugh in his voice and she knows he is thinking of the swans.

She pulls him away from her and stares at him. His eyes are soft as fog in the dim room, the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips. “I won’t give you up, my love,” he says and leans in to kiss her. “For you are mine.”

Sometime later, they fall asleep, their bodies sewn together once again, hands embraced like wings.  


End file.
